Archive for BBC Music Magazine
BBC Recording of the Month: “Pittsburgh Electrifies in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth”
Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 and Schulhoff: Five Pieces is the BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Month! “Honeck’s overriding objective has been to revivify a work that in lesser hands can easily lose its freshness and originality. To achieve this, he has followed Tchaikovsky’s carefully delineated performance instructions to the letter, investing every musical phrase with a wealth of insight, detail and colour. From the outset, Honeck’s infinitely…
Five Stars from BBC Music Magazine for PSO’s Brahms & MacMillan
Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Brahms: Symphony No. 4 & MacMillan: Larghetto for Orchestra release receives a five-star review in the December issue of BBC Music Magazine! “In this outstanding performance of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, Manfred Honeck draws a wonderfully rich, almost Central European string sound from the Pittsburgh Symphony, matched by equally mellifluous and wonderfully blended colours from the woodwind and horns. …there’s a thrilling immediacy to their playing which seems absolutely…
Five Stars for One Movement Symphonies from BBC Music Magazine
Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony’s One Movement Symphonies recording gets a Five Star review from BBC Music Magazine: “this orchestra offers here a classy standard of playing, plus the conductor-and-orchestra chemistry that’s needed to generate musical results as memorable as these, and in three very different works. … The Kansas players respond superbly to [Samuel Barber’s] virtuoso drive and momentum, with a burnished fullness of tone which also brings out the best qualities…
BBC Music Magazine Gives Five Stars to Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck’s Beethoven Symphony No. 9
The April issue of BBC Music Magazine features a Five-Star Review for the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck’s recording of Beethoven Symphony No. 9: “an impressive account of this huge work that seems bent on marking itself as the unassailable definition of ‘monumental’. In terms of sound and precision, the performance is meticulous, immaculate and even. That’s not to say that Honeck doesn’t occasionally play a little loose. … Honeck choreographs the gradual build of…
Pittsburgh Symphony’s Tchaikovsky & Leshnoff is BBC Music Magazine Best of 2020!
BBC Music Magazine’s critics have selected their favorite recordings of 2020 and the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck’s recording of Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 and Jonathan Leshnoff: Double Concerto for Clarinet and Bassoon is a best orchestral recording! “Tchaikovsky’s Fourth is a work of inspired structural ingenuity, as is clear both from Manfred Honeck’s insightful and extensive notes and this fine recording by the Pittsburgh Symphony on the kind of commanding form older collectors may…
Pittsburgh Symphony’s Tchaikovsky and Leshnoff is a BBC Music Magazine Orchestral Choice!
BBC Music Magazine gives the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck a 5-Star Recording rating for Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 and Leshnoff: Double Concerto and makes it their Orchestral Choice! “Tchaikovsky’s Fourth is a work of inspired structural ingenuity, as is clear both from Manfred Honeck’s insightful and extensive notes and this fine recording by the Pittsburgh Symphony… Honeck paces everything so that the eruptions that crown the first movement’s exposition, development, recapitulation and coda retain…
Four Stars for Shostakovich & Barber from BBC Magazine
Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck‘s Shostakovich/Barber receives ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ performance and ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ recording ratings from BBC Music Magazine: “Manfred Honeck’s Shostakovich sounds magnificent. From intense pianissimos to the shrieking upper register and full bass thwack of a grand peroration…there’s faith in what can sometimes seem like a time-serving symphony. … the scherzo is writ huge, like Mahler on steroids, cellos and basses digging in at the start; the finale has all the trenchancy it needs… [the…
BBC Magazine Features José Serebrier’s Janáček!
Order Now BBC Magazine and BBC Radio 3’s “Building A Library” series features Leoš Janáček’s Taras Bulba and lists our recording with the Czech State Philharmonic, Brno and José Serebrier as a Top Four recording! “José Serebrier’s Taras Bulba on a two-disc collection of Janáček’s orchestral music for the audiophile Reference Recordings label is by a clear distance the finest-sounding available, stunning in the breadth and depth of its spatial perspectives. … Serebrier’s is a…
BBC Music Magazine Gives Wuthering Heights Four Stars
The Florentine Opera Company and Milwaukee Symphony’s new recording of Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights gets four stars from BBC Music Magazine in their October 2016 Issue: “In this studio recording following a concert performance by Florentine Opera of Milwaukee, Kelly Markgraf and Georgia Jarman make a powerful impression as the ill-fated couple, and Chad Shelton’s incisive Hindley and Heather Buck’s sweet Isabella also stand out amidst a strong cast. … Under opera specialist Joseph Mechavich,…
BBC Music on Far In The Heavens
True Concord Voices and Orchestra’s Far In The Heavens: Choral Music of Stephen Paulus is reviewed in BBC Music‘s “Brief Notes” section: “…Prayers and Remembrances is the main work here. It marked the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and receives an appropriately sincere, reflective performance by the choir that commissioned it.” Terry Blain, BBC Music Order & Listen Now: ReferenceRecordings.comAmazonArkivMusicApple MusicSpotify
BBC Music Magazine Gives Five Stars to Pittsburgh Symphony’s “Strauss”
BBC Music Magazine gives the Pittsburgh Symphony’s Strauss recording five stars! “Manfred Honeck’s interpretations have huge personality, and mostly in the right way. … The poetry is intense, yielding in Don Juan the most beautiful oboe cantilena ever. … The orchestra plays passionately and luminously, with the brass thrusting when they need to be. … the recorded Strauss celebrations are going well in 150th-anniversary year.” —David Nice, BBC Music Magazine Read the full review on…